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Chapultepec Girls
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23 February 2027

Chapultepec Girls weaves together threads of cultural, intellectual, and social history to examine how girls articulated a unique and previously unacknowledged vision of Mexican American culture and politics distinct from—and in some cases directly oppositional to—the political cultures of adult male-led Mexican organizations. Through a vivid microhistory of Club Feminino Chapultepec, a Houston-based organization, this book identifies Mexican American girls’ radical politics in manifestos, speeches, organized labor actions, as well as in the choreography of folk-dance expositions, the planning of enchilada dinner fundraisers and birthday party entertainment, and in the contours of everyday working-class life. Chapultepec Girls reinterprets pochitas not as culturally delinquent or even passive victims but as a social and political vanguard, embedded within a sprawling, transnational web of activists, scholars, and political organizations that stretched from New York City to Mexico City and beyond.
Jordan Villegas-Verrone is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Methodist University.
Contents
The Letter from Chapultepec
Introduction
Prelude: “They have had some rather serious cases recently”
1. “To better understanding, respect and opportunity”: Pan-American Girlhood and Houston’s First Club for Mexican Girls
2. “An excellent cross section of the Mexican colony”: The Founding Membership of Club Chapultepec
3. “A patriotism not kind to Mexican children”: Ethnic Mexican Removal and the Texas Centennial
4. “They are considered traitors for having lived in Texas”: The Cultural Politics of Pochitas
5. “They are called ‘brown people,’ ‘greasers,’ et cetera”: Race-Making and Minority Issues in the YWCA
Conclusion: “P.S. These statements were verified by outstanding men in the Mexican colony”
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index